CHRISTOFASCISM: MARCH WITH CHRIST.

UKIP, now led by Nick Tenconi, has evolved (or arguably regressed) a great deal from the Farage-led era of bright purple “battle buses” donned with falsified slogans and would tour the lengths of the nation. Nowadays, UKIP is synonymous with the Christian fundamentalist movement in Britain and is certainly more brazen in their extreme and hateful rhetoric. Chanting “Islamist filth” and making rogue claims about the “genocide of white-brits”, UKIP has pledged to congregate and precession each month in what they are referring to as a “Walk with christ”. While their numbers are low, it is clear to see how they are a piece of the influential and extreme right-wing puzzle. They wander the streets, chanting hatred and vitriol while protected by the police. 

Yet, on the same day as their most recent “Walk with Christ”, one hundred thousand people marched in the name of a Free Palestine and a number of those were detained by the Police for speaking arabic and for attempting to leave the demonstration and go home. These marches, although very regular and always well-attended, have little if any impact upon policy nevermind the Freedom of Palestine. While, 100 people marching has an astronomical impact upon the way we are all governed and the growing sentiment for intolerance we are seeing in the mainstream. In essence, democracy does not exist but I’m not sure I really need to tell anybody that anymore.

“I remember 2016, I was in school and the Brexit referendum was going, going, gone. The political party on everybody’s lips was UKIP, the man of the moment was Farage and it was a very distinctive time in my life that I now categorise as a rise in racism and the fall in belonging. We were children, we had no say over politics and no sway over our circumstance but we surely felt the wrath of it. I can still recall catching the number 1 bus to school maybe 3 or 4 days after the referendum and an old man with a walking stick spitting at my feet as he sat down beside me uttering the words “dirty foreign bastards.” I sunk into the chair and stared blankly at my shoes alongside the speckles, it was not my first rodeo and indeed I had come to understand that some people just believed me and my kind inferior. But then another man whom he was not acquainted with got on a few stops later and they spoke in jeers about “taking ‘ar country back.” I remember thinking it was strange, for I had been led to believe that it was a small minority with views like this. Eventually, I got off of the bus but the sentiment around me did not seem to change with setting or circumstance. Time passed, 10 years to be exact, people changed and so did I but hateful and misconstrued rhetorics like those ultimately remained the same. They only became more socially acceptable and more misled with falsification that looked to many as intellectualisation. Looking back, that was the re-birth of all the horrors and revulsion we are now bearing witness to and enduring today.”